


Game Shows Touch Our Lives

by blueinkedbones



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Angst, Depression, Derek is the Boy With the Bread, F/M, Gerard is President Snow, Kate is Effie Trinket, M/M, Minor Character Death, OH YEAH Peter is Haymitch, Scott and Allison are both Gale I don't even know, Stiles is kind of Katniss, Survivor Guilt, a lot of it, guilt in general
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-13
Updated: 2013-03-20
Packaged: 2017-12-05 03:35:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/718425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueinkedbones/pseuds/blueinkedbones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So there's Derek, fifteen years old, shivering in his too-thin clothes, trying to get <em>Kate</em> fucking <em>Argent</em> to notice him. To <em>fall</em> for him. And he doesn't know even what he was <em>doing</em>, he doesn't even have a fucking <em>clue</em>, except Laura said, “Give her the look. With the eyes. And the face,” like Derek had any idea what that meant. But everyone else seemed sure it'll work, optimistic, even <em>Peter</em>, who's never optimistic about <em>anything</em> anymore. So Derek agrees, because he can't <em>not</em> agree, not with everyone looking at him like he's actually their fucking ticket to the Capitol, and <em>anarchy</em>, and actually having <em>food,</em> and not fighting to the death on TV every year and either dying or coming back like Peter, like a fucking <em>ghost version</em> of yourself, all traumatized and hardened and—</p><p>So Derek agrees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Game Shows Touch Our Lives

Okay so obviously Peter can't seduce anyone because he's fucked up since the Games, and it would be a dead giveaway, as in, all the Hales would be _dead_. And Laura's a girl, so she has actual non-kissy shit to do. And it obviously can't be Derek's parents, or any of the kids, so if it's gonna be anyone, it's gonna have to be Derek.

So there's Derek, fifteen years old, shivering in his too-thin clothes, trying to get _Kate_ fucking _Argent_ to notice him. To _fall_ for him. And he doesn't know even what he's _doing_ , he doesn't even have a fucking _clue_ , except Laura said “Give her the look. With the eyes. And the face,” like Derek has any idea what that meant. But everyone else seems sure it'll work, optimistic, even Peter, who's never optimistic about anything anymore. So Derek agrees, because he can't _not_ agree, not with everyone looking at him like he's actually their fucking ticket to the Capitol, and _anarchy_ , and actually having _food,_ and not fighting to the death on TV every year and either dying or coming back like Peter, like a fucking _ghost version_ of yourself, all traumatized and hardened and—

So Derek agrees.

Derek agrees, and he does— _stuff_ , whatever stuff people like. He isn't _stupid_ , he knows what he looks like, what he's good for. And Kate falls for it, falls for _him_ , and they're fucking _in_. She tells Derek stuff, what he needs to know, he doesn't even have to sneak around like he planned with Mom and Dad, with Peter, who has been to the Capitol and actually knows what it looks like.

But.

The thing is.

The thing is she isn't _like_ her father. She isn't like President Argent, she _hates_ him. Against his chest, she whispers about how she'd like nothing better than to see the whole Capitol go down in _flames_. Kate is- she _gets it_ , okay, she _understands_. Him, and his family, what they want, what they're planning, she wants it too. He holds her tight and strokes her hair and she tells him she wishes they could just end the stupid Games right now. That if his name ever gets picked, she'll _die_.

Because—because she _loves_ him.

And Derek feels like the biggest sack of shit in the world, because he's screwing with her, and she _loves_ him. Really, actually—

It all comes out in a rush, after too much quiet, guilt spinning in his belly until he's dizzy and feels worse than the time there was no food for a week and two days and everyone was just waiting to die. He tells Kate about that. He tells her about _everything,_ about being dirt poor and actually eating _dirt_ when there isn't anything else, when there isn't water. About watching Peter go off to the Games, watching him compete, killing all those other kids, coming back so broken Derek's not sure he wouldn't've been better off _dead_. About the Reaping, every year, how terrified everyone is for _months_ beforehand. How terrified everyone is _all the time._

And she listens, really listens, and she said, “Oh, _Derek_ ,” and she hugs him, and in his ear she promises she'll make things right, make them _pay_ , and he takes a shaky breath and _tells_ her.

And her face goes hard, and she stiffens under him, arms tightening around his ribs in a vise grip. And his heart is in his throat, and he doesn't _understand_ , and then she snarls, “ _I knew it_ ,” and he stops breathing.

No.

No, she can't—

No, she _loves_ him. 

But not as much, not as much as she loves killing his family, making them _examples_ , making Derek _watch_.

 

 

 

They take Mom first. She's still standing strong, still trying to be brave, still trying to keep to the message even as they cut her tongue out. They _cut her tongue out_ , and Derek _howls_ , scratches kicks bites at the men holding him back, screams, “ _Mom!_ ” until he's hoarse, until he can't scream for sobbing.

Then they set her on fire.

And then she's screaming, formless screams, and Derek is shuddering, face stiff with tears, the men have to hold him up, one on either side of him, holding him still, and someone is screaming with her, _I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, stop it, STOP IT! Put her out! Put her OU-OUT!_

And that someone is him.

Dad's next.

Derek isn't even fighting anymore, isn't even trying to get away. He just stands there limply, knees weak, numb and freezing and sweat-stained, suspended by human handcuffs, and he stares at the ground, blinking hard, hating himself more than he's ever hated anything or anyone, and Dad isn't making any show of bravado, he's scared, and a lump swells in Derek's throat.

“What did you say?” Dad asks, almost kindly, and Derek starts sobbing again, starts hiccuping apologies until he can't breathe. Starts saying, “Dad... Dad... I didn't—I thought—I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, oh my _god_...”

“It's okay,” Dad says, and Derek wants to laugh. It's the _farthest thing from okay_ , Mom is—Mom is _gone_ , she was _burned alive_ , and now— “It's gonna be okay.”

Maybe that's what does it, what gets Derek to stop crying, to force his face stoic and unmoved, to stop screaming. His fists curl at his sides, tears cling to his eyelashes, but he just _stops_. Just stops letting them enjoy this so damn much.

They cut out Dad's tongue, too, even though he doesn't say anything, and Derek doesn't say anything, and then there's nothing but the whistle of flame and his father's screams, the smell of roasting meat, and the tears sliding silently down Derek's face. That's all there is.

Peter is spared. The champion of the district, the only one from Twelve since the Games began. He doesn't even have to watch.

Laura is last, after the kids even. They've never been particularly close, for siblings, but she's all he has, now, besides Peter. She's still defiant, spiteful, after all of that, seeing all of that. She's a fighter. They could've fought the Capitol, they could've _won_ , but Derek had to be an _idiot_ who fucked everything up, who did _this_.

She's eighteen, and she's the only one left, and she's gonna die.

They cut her tongue out, and Derek crumples, would've crumpled if not for the strong fists still holding him up. He sways on his feet anyway, shakes his head. He can't watch that. They can't make him watch that.

“I'm sorry,” he said. His voice sounds very far away, detached from his body, floating. And then he's begging. “Please,” he says, voice high and thin. He sounds thirteen, twelve, eleven. He doesn't care. “Anything, I'll do anything. Just let her go.” He's heard of what they do with rebels after they cut their tongues off. They don't set them on fire, that's new, that's special. That's Kate's special twist. Derek hates Kate almost as much as he hates himself.

Laura doesn't have to die. She can be an Avox. She can be something. She doesn't have to die. She didn't even do anything.

But neither did the kids, Derek's little brothers, and they didn't care. Aaron, Eli, Damon, ashes. Everyone. Everyone.

Because of him, because he's an _idiot_.

“Please,” he says, sounding absolutely pathetic, sniffling and barely standing, bleating out his last chance at hope. “I'll—I'll compete, okay, huh? I'll compete in your sick fucking game, I volunteer. Just let her go.”

Kate gets a wicked gleam in her eye. She's enjoying this, all of this. How could he have ever thought—? It's like she's two different _people_. “Deal.”

Laura's eyes go wide, and she opens her mouth to speak, finds she can't, and shakes her head violently. Her fingers carve words in the air, two feet high.

_No._

“'No?'” Kate repeats, amused. “He's the reason your whole family is bacon bits. He's the reason you can't say a word ever again.”

Derek doesn't know what bacon bits are, and he doesn't want to. He wants to go out into that arena and die. _Now_.

Laura shakes her head again. Points at Kate. Draws letters in the air again.

 _You_.

And then, slowly, laboriously, she adds, _Not him_. _YOU_.

Pointing to Derek, she continues, eyes wide and fierce, _Not your fault_.

Derek lets out a high, pained sound. He needs—he needs her away. Safe. Anything else, he can handle. But she has to make it through. She _has_ to.

Laura is spelling again. Quicker now, getting the hang of it.

_Lethimgo. LETHIMGO._

Derek shakes his head. “No, don't—” He looks back at Kate, at her evil, sneering face. “You said we had a deal.”

_IVOLUNTEER._

“ _No!_ ” Derek shouts. “No, you can't. I already—Stop it!” He turns to Kate again, frantic. “You said we had a deal!”

Kate smirks. “I got a better offer, honey.” She smiles, baring all her teeth. “Big sister here's got herself a booked spot in the 74th annual Hunger Games.”

“No,” Derek says, still shaking his head. The world is fuzzy at the edges. “I volunteer! I _volunteer_!” 

“Oh, _Derek_ ,” Kate purrs, mock-sympathetic. Derek's stomach turns. “Don't worry. You'll have a ringside seat.”

 

 

 

Laura makes it to the top three before someone from Seven cuts her in half. Fucking— _cuts her in half_. The cannon sounds, and that's it.

Derek watches the Games in the Capitol's best screening room, next to none other than President Argent himself. Kate keeps a cold grip on his wrist, stops him from standing up, from covering his eyes.

Derek doesn't want to say anything. Doesn't want to give them the satisfaction.

It comes out anyway, when they turn to stare at him, his ass numb in the stupid, fancy chair, watching his sister's death on the instant replay, blinking furiously. When Kate sees the look on his face, how fucking devastated he is, and lets out a little amused giggle.

“You psychotic _bitch_ ,” he spits, glaring at her. “You get off on this, don't you? Both of you. You _sick fucks_.”

They just stare at him.

“So what now, huh?” he challenges. He's full up on adrenaline, nothing left to lose. “You gonna kill me, or just admire my amazing physique?”

President Argent's voice, when Derek first hears it this close, is rattling and rumbling and overly dramatic. “No, Derek. You, my boy, are going back home.”

Derek's eyes narrow. Despite himself, he says, “I don't understand.”

“You've learned your lesson, I'm sure. There's no use lingering on this... tragic situation any longer.”

“Tragic situation, my _ass_ ,” Derek seethes. “You murdered my whole family.”

“I think you'll find that they were the cause of their own unfortunate ends,” Argent says calmly. “There must be order, son. Without order, where would we be?”

“You'd be dead,” Derek snarls, shaking. “We'd cut off your head and have a fucking parade with it on the fucking Capitol flag.”

“Ah, ah,” Argent tuts, wagging his finger in warning. “We wouldn't want your rogue tongue cut out, now, would we?”

“I don't give a—”

“Or Peter's.” Argent hums, content, as Derek freezes.

“You can't—He didn't do anything!”

“I think you'll find,” Argent says, standing up and hulking over Derek's chair, inches from Derek's face, breath hot and sour on his skin, “that I can do anything I damn well please, Derek Hale.” 

And then he reels his arm back and punches Derek in the face.

 

 

 

For the first few days back in District 12, Derek just—is.

Peter, still living in his fancy house in the Victor's Village, wants nothing to do to do with him. Derek can't blame him.

The bruise on his cheek fades, after a while. The anger in his gut doesn't, but he isn't doing much of anything anymore. Someone, Argents probably, burned down his house, but he can't summon up the strength to sweep away the ashes and rebuild. 

Instead, he lies down in the corner, where two unsteady walls still meet, and curls as small as he can, and sleeps.

 

 

 

Time passes...

It gets lighter, then darker, than lighter again. It doesn't much matter to Derek. Nothing does, really.

He's tired, he's always tired, he wakes up tired and closes his eyes again. There's nothing he can do, no one he can fight, so he doesn't stand, doesn't get up, doesn't even bother.

He's hungry, sometimes, but he hardly notices. Mostly he's empty, exhausted, _done_. Mostly he's the walking dead, Peter back from the Games.

Except Peter never had a choice. And Peter, Peter _won_. Derek lost. He just lost everything.

Then there are the nightmares. Making it impossible to sleep, impossible to breathe.

And then one day his stomach hurts so bad he thinks he's dying, and he doesn't really care, but some instinct takes hold of him, sends him stumbling to the market, from house to house. Anything, he just needs to eat something, then he can go back to being a living ghost again.

Pointless, he's pointless.

He passes out, somewhere between the market and the ashes he calls home, stomach empty and digesting itself, and is sure that is the end.

 _How anticlimactic_ , he thinks idly as he hits the ground.

 

 

 

But that isn't the end.

He wakes up on a bed of straw in a house. All four walls intact, ceiling and everything. There's the forgotten-but-rushing-back smell of fresh baked bread all around him, and an unfamiliar man with his back to Derek, pulling long, golden-brown loaves out of the oven. Fresh bread. Only one person outside of the Victor's Village can produce fresh bread.

Old Man Deaton, the district baker.

Derek's parents managed to scrape together some money to pay for bread, sometimes. But never whole loaves. And never fresh.

For the first time in a long time, his mouth waters, imagining it.

He's very weak, and his head is pounding, but when Old Man Deaton turns around, he sits up as best as he can. His stomach lurches, and he suppresses the urge to vomit.

“Derek,” Old Man Deaton says pleasantly. “You're awake.”

Derek squints, confused. “How—?” He's very lightheaded. His question leaves his head, floats around for a few seconds before coming back to him. “Uh, how do you know my name?”

“I know everything that happens in this district, Derek,” Old Man Deaton says. “Your family...”

Derek gags; his head swims. “Don't,” he gasps, palms clapped over his mouth, around the back of his head. “Just... Don't.” He remembers the bread, remembers his manners. “Please.”

Old Man Deaton nods, his eyes dark, and Derek remembers the stories about him. How all of his family were killed in the first Rebellion, the one that got the Games started in the first place. How he's been on his own ever since, baking bread and sometimes, when he can get the right kind of sugar, the kind that isn't cut with sawdust, cakes. He's the district legend, the oldest memory anyone has of anything. People die too young here to keep history. To do much of anything. Old Man Deaton, people say, trades bread for a story, if it's good enough, true enough. The kinds Derek used to tell—to tell his kid brothers, those weren't any good, weren't worth anything. He tried, when they were starving, they were always starving, tried to wrack his brains for anything good, anything worth remembering, and came up blank. A disappointment, again. Derek's only ever been good at one thing, and with—with the Argents, he fucked that up too.

But he has a story _now_. He has a story that won't shut up. Won't stay locked up, pushed down where he puts it.

That must be why Old Man Deaton found him.

He doesn't want to talk about it. About any of it. But he's starving, and he's angry, and he wants to eat, and rant, and he wants to know what happened to Old Man Deaton's family. Wants to know what he did, afterwards, a kid alone for seventy-four years, how he's still baking bread, so calm, not ripping himself to pieces, not throwing everything he owns against the wall just to watch it break. Derek needs to know how he did, how he does that. If he's going to live another day, he needs to know that.

So he blinks, tries to clear his vision, and he clears his throat, and he says, “I've, uh, got—I've got a story for you.”

Old Man Deaton smiles slightly, takes a loaf from the pan, and breaks it in half. Derek takes it with shaking hands. It's still so hot he has to juggle it between his hands, and it smells amazing. Nothing like the cold, gray, gritty, tasteless food of the district; not like the odd, bright-colored, plastic food of the the Capitol. This is the best thing he can remember eating, and he makes a point to remember the few bright spots, the rare tastes of something that hasn't had all the flavor boiled out of it. There was an orange, when he was ten, Peter's gift from his win, a souvenir of the Capitol. It was a whole fruit bowl, apples and oranges and pears in elaborate crystal, but most was traded for firewood, for new shoes, for some tarp to cover the draft in the wall. The rest was split with the whole family. Segments of bright juicy orange were passed around; a pear became jam, spread thinly on stale bread, and mash for Aaron, still teething back then; the apple went to Grandma Hale, who had been dreaming of apples for as long as Derek could remember. It didn't stop her dying later that year, but the sound as she bit down on the fruit was kind of gratifying in a vicarious sort of way, and she deserved it more than anyone else did. She was the one who masterminded the plan, the plan Derek fucked up so well. Derek likes to think, bitterly, that she'd be proud of his achievements as an above and beyond fuck-up. They always said he wasn't good for anything but looking pretty. Turns out he can get his whole family murdered, too. 

He bites down. His teeth sink through the light, crispy crust into warm, chewy dough, and it's good enough to put tears in his eyes. It's good enough to remind him that he doesn't deserve it, that it should be Laura here, Mom, Dad, the kids, any of them, all of them. Not him, that's for sure. But he's the one who's here. He's the one who's left. So he fills his mouth with warm bread, and he tries to figure out how to start.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry.
> 
> Title is also the title of an awesome song by the Mountain Goats! John Darnielle should do the soundtrack to everything.


End file.
